The Seduction of Sleep
by N.C. Stormeye
Summary: A Dissection of Ban and Himiko's minds as they develop feelings for each other. Experiment in style. BanxHimiko
1. Shades of Gray

_**The Seduction of Sleep**_

**By N.C. Stormeye**

_**Disclaimer: **_Back when I was a fan, I'd come up with catchy little disclaimers. In this piece of ancient history, there is nothing catchy. All I can say is, I don't own it. In the end, for a time, _it _owned _me_.

_**Authoress' Notes: **_Ban Mido and Himiko Kudo…in the fall of year 2003 I started writing romance-fics for the both of them but never finished my intended series. Back then it was all full of sappiness. But I like to finish things, so I'm finishing them. Voodoo Child curse is nullified at this point, so _slight _AU.

Screw my poetic sentiments. Away we go.

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**I.** Shades of Gray

Ban's dreams are dreams in shades of gray, on normal days. They are dreams of compressed memories and vague physical remnants. Smells, touches, tastes…childhood leaves traces even a master of illusions, of reinvention, cannot erase.

They should be-are-full of _sight_…since his eyes are his weapons and they are effective weapons, as are his dreams. How his twisted mind concocts so much horror is not a mystery…he gets them from those little pieces of shattered psyche he's allowed to collect at the bottom of his mind's proverbial dustbin.

Ban knows what dreaming in shades of gray _means. _It means that you are holding back something, squashing down something. It means a mental denial of emotion…depression perhaps. Dreaming in black and white means simplistic extremism, knowing the lines between good and evil. His dreaming in gray means he no longer knows much of the difference.

On normal days, after a cup of coffee and several Marlboros puffed away, Ban tries very hard not to dream. He tries drinking cup after cup of a potent black tea (three drops can keep you up all night), smoking three packs an hour, and watching people pass the car by, if it happens to be parked in a crowded place. He claims it's better than television, but only because he and Ginji can't afford one.

But he falls asleep anyway, as if the snake in his head (so it's in his arm, screw technicalities) lulls him to sleep with a steady, hissing rhythm. And then the dreams he does not fear but dislikes immensely come to call, playing across his mind like a film without sound. That's another little pet peeve of his, that his dreams are silent. The silence is so deafening he wishes he could fill it up with words. But he can't speak. Little wonder he makes it a point to be _heard _when he awakes, a coarse vocabulary that still carries a hint of its eloquent past.

He hates the silence, and the gray, and the fact that his dreams are so tangible that he can't _touch _them. How everything has to be so complicated and contradicting that he wishes he could…


	2. Insomnia

**Disclaimer: **I do not own Get Backers. For a time, however, it owned _me_.

**A/N: **I'll blow this for you and tell you that the chapters are alternating points of view, so you'll be ping-ponging through Ban and Himiko's minds. This one, quite obviously, is Himiko's POV.

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**II. **Insomnia

Wake up.

That is what Himiko does every morning, sun streaming through cheap curtains as she struggles to disentangle herself from tangled, sweaty, cheaper sheets. This is what she does when she opens the flimsy curtains to welcome another '_glorious_' day before clambering into her shower, her clothes, her life.

Himiko does not mind the morning, only minds that it comes so soon and stays so long. Himiko likes sleeping because it is the only thing she finds relaxing, lately. And because it comes after so much labor, and only in short, fitful snatches. Sleep, like everything else in her life, is something she has to _fight_ for. Which is essentially unfair because she is one of the few people who deserve a peaceful night's rest, dead to the world yet able to live another day.

She has tried everything. Avoiding coffee, chocolate (and that was secretly hard to give up but how else would her figure stay so trim in her clinging garment), even when her missions became tiring and her body screamed for a caffeine rush in order to stay alive. She has tried night-driving, but her eyes never blur with sleep and the collection of scents only drives drowsiness farther and farther away.

Lately she sits exhausted in bed, staring at the whitewashed wall and thinking until she falls asleep. Sometimes she thinks so hard it becomes a waking dream, and she can almost _see _her thoughts on that wall. She feels _old_ when she finds how many memories she has to sort through to create thoughts. And yet…and yet she is only a child that is now an adult and enjoys it and the freedom because she has the license now to _be _a child again, at the very least in the sense that there is less of a burden to bear. It is only how to get by from day to day.

And compared to what she _used _to have to worry about, that isn't so much of a problem now, is it?

Himiko is an insomniac, and she admits it to herself though she will never tell anyone else. She hates those evenings where her body is calling her to rest but her eyes are wide open and she cannot close them, even though she wants to. It's the insensibility of the moment that gets her the most, the fact that she can't _feel _anything. The fact that all her nerves are singing with 'Alive! Awake!', but she doesn't want them to be.

But what annoys and scares her most is that before she falls asleep she _sees _everything. She _sees_…


	3. What He Likes

**Disclaimer: **I do not own Get Backers. For a time, however, it owned _me_.

**A/N: **…I think this qualifies as the 'emo' chapter…and the hardest to understand. Nothing's really happening in this chapter. Things start to happen later in the story. For now, we're still plumbing the depths of Ban and Himiko's minds.

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**III. **What He Likes

_The blood_. And the annoying repetition of an overused memory. It's one of Ban's _least _favorite of his hated 'dreams'. Snapshots of an infinite Polaroid. Sometimes he thinks he commits suicide by smoking just for that memory alone. He _hates _how much that memory comes to mind when he dreams. He feels half-awake when he dreams, really. On normal days, when he is sensible of everything and more _sensitive _than he cares to let on. People _'know_' that supposedly but do they _really _know how much he feels and how much he knows?

If they did maybe they'd be even more frightened of him that they are now. And he likes it that way, to hide behind brashness and cocky comebacks that are calculated to simply _piss off _but not _threaten_, never _scare_. Because he likes to be the one to decide when a fight begins. He likes being in control.

And that's what he hates the most about his dreams, that he can't control them. He can't stop the fact that they keep coming. He doesn't _want _to fall asleep anymore, simply because sleep is the one moment where he is defenseless. And Mido Ban-sama does not _like _defenseless.

He likes…coffee, and his cigarettes. Grudgingly admits to liking classical music playing softly in the background as he thinks (but that can't happen very often because there is always _where_ and most of the time Ban thinks on his feet). Maybe looking at _art_, once in awhile. Or _reading_…sometimes. Pizza, often, especially when free. And people-watching.

He likes many things, but not being defenseless, out of control. Which is why he makes it a point to _not _think about his past. Because what can one have less control over than the past?

He does not like feeling sorry and also angry at the same time. Sorry because he _didn't want _to do it, because he _knows _he did something that could be considered wrong. _Angry _because he is reliving something that need not be replayed and mused over. It is _over_…too many things have triggered it that now the situation seems like a bad cliché. It was _necessary, asked for_…and then he remembers he no longer has to explain it to himself and he feels annoyed that he is being so foolish in justifying the already justified.

So he stops pondering it when he dreams about it…and soon enough the dream begins to fade until it is only a vague echo and the reel moves on to other things, other fainter memories. And the guilt dulls when he knows its purpose.

He feels, for a cold, clear moment, that he had control over his dreams for once. He _likes _that. Yet somehow he doesn't, because the sheer spontaneity of dreaming is gone and all that is left is something under _his _control. Because secretly, Ban likes things that are _uncontrollable_…no matter how much you try to control them.

Still, his nights get a little better…ordinary nights in city parks or one of those narrow, tree-lined streets that come so rarely and are a blessing to find. And slowly, within him, Ban feels as if things have started to…


	4. The Beauty of the Sensation

**Disclaimer: **Do I _have _to keep repeating this? I _do not _own Get Backers. I just toy with them because I'm too lazy to go create my own characters…for the time being, anyway.

**A/N**: Finally, something _happens_! I'm sure you were all bored to tears reading the amateur psychoanalysis I was performing in the past few chapters. I'm still using that weird format of barely using punctuation and sticking dialogue together in one paragraph. Rest assured, if it annoys too many people by the end of Chapter Six, I'll switch to the conventional narrative. I'm just trying to experiment with style…at least in fanfiction.

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**IV. **The Beauty of the Sensation

Change begins when Himiko finds the gateway to a peaceful night…_honesty. _It comes on her motorcycle, on a long night drive in quest for sleep punctuated by her bike's mechanical lullaby. The city night lights are a blur of psychedelic color that she ignores. It is the sensation she's after.

It's a tree-lined, narrow side street that begins it all, and _his _car parked on that rare little street, cozy and narrow and shaded by trees. Inside, _he _is asleep, sweat beading on his forehead and his eyes clenched shut, moving as if dreaming. Trapped in his own nightmares. Defenseless. A voice inside her long forgotten says it is _her time _for revenge…that revenge she used to crave but not now, no longer now.

The windows are open, daring any intruder to simply come, try to steal the car (but who would steal such a silly, small car), and knife the two men sleeping in it. Instead it is her hand, wiping the sweat off his cool (strangely so but what else could she expect from a snake) forehead as her nerves are tense and singing with a haunting melody she would rather deny. A curse worse than the Voodoo Child…or a blessing in disguise.

He wakes up, slowly, those eyes first a hazy blue as he mumbles "…violet…" as if still in the world between sleeping and waking. In a second (it seems like a second but who knows) he jolts up, however, sputtering and shocked as he says "Himiko?", managing however not to wake his sleeping partner as he looks at her, slightly surprised. He gets out of his car and leans against it, crossing his arms. "What are you doing awake?" "I'm old enough to stay up late." She replies and he scowls.

"Smart-ass. You don't stay up on a whim." He says and Himiko smiles wryly, knowing that he knows her all too well. "Can't sleep." She confesses. He scrutinizes her eyes before he asks "How long?" And she sighs…he _really _knows her. "A month." She replies resignedly. He shakes his head.

"You didn't tell me." "Like I need to."

He sighs, and she sees that he is debating his over-used "I made a promise to look out for you" speech but he doesn't give it. Instead, he sighs, and she smiles slightly. She doesn't need to because she is all grown up now but she still feels so young next to him and so old at the same time.

"Funny thing," he says, "I've been trying not to sleep." He lights a cigarette and puffs, staring at the sky. She mimics that gesture, the blowing into the air except it comes out as a low whistle. "The dreams again." Because he's had them ever since and she knows him better than anyone else save his partner, and maybe she knows a few things more that _his partner _does. He nods and she sighs, leaning against her motorcycle, wanting so bad to ruffle his hair down and see the boy she knew from long ago because he'd be easier to talk to than this…man who stands in his place with his eyes and his face.

But whose eyes are unchanged by time.

"Want to take a drive?" Himiko blurts out suddenly, an offer hanging in the air like a promise made of smoke and city lights. 'Where'd that come from, thought you needed space?" he asks and she shrugs. "Helps me stay awake, even if I don't want to ." She offers and he sighs. "Can't trust Ginji alone with the car." But she reasons. It's just a little while.

"You have no sidecar today." He notes. She shrugs. "You can ride behind me then."

He should observe she has no spare helmet but he's always one to court danger, so he obliges, putting out his cigarette. It's hard not to react when his cold arms wrap around her slim waist and his breath beats hot on her neck, ruffling her green hair. She jerks and he feels it and asks "You okay with this?" "I'm fine," she says, "Just hang on." And she puts her helmet on and away they go, as she tries to ignore how his breath feels so…intimate. Different. And she wonders if now they are still just like brother and sister…or something else.

But she pushes that to the back of her mind as she pushes on the gas. They cruise around, a strange sight but they don't care. They don't talk either, and she feels as if they aren't the same people…as if they're two souls in the same bodies of old…but they're different somehow.

"You're pretty quiet back there." She says. He grunts. "Look who's talking." And she laughs. "I'm used to you starting the fights." "Well I don't want to fight, so there." He says petulantly and she laughs again, and suddenly feels as if she could fall asleep.

They get back to his car and he yawns and stretches. "Thought you said this _helps _you stay awake?" he grumbles and Himiko yawns. "Used to…now I'm tired."

"Sure you can drive back?" He says. She nods. He shrugs. "Hope you sleep well tonight." And she smiles. "You too." feeling strangely like a shy teen when she says it, something she isn't and never really _was_. He smiles-not smirks, _smiles_-and enters the car to rejoin his car-mate who didn't even notice he was gone.

"Good night, Himiko."

"Better see you alive tomorrow, Ban." She says. And she means every word. And little does she know but that is only the…


	5. Science of Dreaming Colors

**Disclaimer: **Do I _have _to keep repeating this? I _do not _own Get Backers. I just toy with them because I'm too lazy to go create my own characters…for the time being, anyway.

**A/N**: I wish I could watch the film "Eternal Sunshine of The Spotless Mind" but I can't seem to find a _legal _DVD of it. The freaky style continues. If I get a majority of negative reviews by the sixth chapter – at least when it comes to my style – I'll change to the conventional narrative. Though I must say, I'm having fun writing like this.

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**V. **Science of Dreaming Colors

Beginning…it's a funny word that strangely sounds like what it means. A start. And this is how Ban feels when he wakes up to realize that his dreams the night before were not his vision-less sensory snapshots but images of his night-ride and the scent of _her _under all the potions and poisons and smoke. How the city was dotted with electric-blue lights and violet stars all eclipsed by the feeling of sheer _speed_ and losing oneself.

And _her_. Forgiveness is a beginning. Forgiveness is a crazy ride around the city and all it entails.

Ban gives Ginji that kind of forgiveness…though he has nothing to forgive his partner for except maybe the occasional stolen bit of food and a fight that entails getting electrocuted. It is a beginning, of a new day and a new set of problems drowned away with coffee and maybe a few cigarettes…of course, that's just him. His partner drowns his problems through sheer magnanimity and perhaps a cute conversation with a certain perky café waitress.

He has time to mull over that word because it's an _off _day and all he has is a café table, a tab, and perhaps the newspaper if he can sneak it away from Paul. So he sits there, smoking and sipping coffee (because Paul is feeling lenient) and musing over beginnings and what they promise. Beginnings are promises after all.

Then _she _enters and he feels funny, how her entrance is also a beginning and how it is a sequel to last night and the dreaming in full color. "Sleep well?" he asks. "Yeah." She answers, then orders a cup of coffee which she pays for. She sits at a table instead of at the bar, as if pointedly illustrating the distance between them. He doesn't seem to notice, or care. But inside he wonders the reason for the distance.

There are such things as false starts after all.

"Slow day?" He says, and she shrugs over her coffee. "Perhaps." And that word seems pregnant with everything she could have said instead, but he chooses to disregard that. He feels he should thank her for one of the most colorful dreams of his life. Shades of blue and purple blending into white as the feeling of running past everything fills his senses.

"How'd you dream?" she asks, as if reading his mind. "Well." He says, stretching. She smiles wryly. "Thought so. Me too." He shrugs, sipping his black coffee and lighting his tenth cigarette of the day.

"You shouldn't smoke so much." She says, breaking the silence. Well, actually it is not silence. Right now Ginji is pestering him and Natsumi is humming to herself as she wipes plates. Paul is also smoking and reading the paper, letting out a low whistle now and then. But Ban doesn't care. He can take himself out of the situation if he wants to, and he can focus on one thing.

Her. Scrutinizing how much she has changed. He doesn't feel quite as voyeuristic shamelessly ogling her because he's _known _her form more than any other woman's…though not _intimately_. He's _used _to her perhaps, as his domestic life holds traces of her, like the etching on his lighter or the fact that he has such a good sense of smell…

Ban knows she's scarred him, beautifully. Beautiful scars so different from the ones he earns in his fights. He won't call them battles, not like a certain psychopath with a permanent ego trip. They are fights, necessary evils to get to a goal. And what he gets out of it is a few pathetic yen and the scars.

Perhaps she is also a fight, a scar. Except perhaps he gets no yen out of it. Just the satisfaction of knowing that at least, on some points, he has finally won an old friend back. It feels…strangely comforting to him. He has made a career out of being feared and hated, mostly hated. To have a few people like him is a comfort he grudgingly admits.

Excepting his partner, it is her approval he values most. Perhaps because she has known him longest.

"Why not?" He finally answers. His reluctance to give up a filthy habit was never a subject of discussion between them. She sighs. "They'll kill you someday. If…" but she falters. And he knows what she would have said. _If you didn't kill my brother, they would've._ "Never mind." She says, waving a hand dismissively. He shrugs. "It's fine." He's being so passive this morning that even Ginji stops pestering him and chats with Natsumi instead. Leaving Ban to his coffee and the girl he used to know.

"So…off day?" She says and he shrugs. "Maybe. Unless HEVN happens to pop by with something." He sounds a bit too eager there and she misinterprets his eagerness. Her voice takes on a bite when she says "HEVN _always _pops by with _something_." He laughs, understanding her. "Yeah, and those too." And she smiles wryly, rolling her eyes and continuing with her coffee.

Ban is more perceptive than he appears. And even though the next moments are spent in silence, he senses the lack of hostility and is comforted-admitted grudgingly to himself-by that fact. They sit that way for a while, in the silence of a morning spent in idleness where nothing and everything can happen. HEVN arrives soon enough, the bells of the door chiming her arrival and Natsumi roused from her riveting conversation (mostly sweet-talk but then Ginji's innocent sweet talk can be riveting to a similarly innocent waitress). A job briefing and a hasty argument later and the Get Backers are out the door.

Ban's parting shot, "See you around Himiko." And she smiles, quietly, and offers "Ja." The placid scene before another action-filled day or set of days. At first it's tentative, but then it becomes…


End file.
